In this little book, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, neuroscientist/writer David Eagleman imagines 40
possibilities of what the afterlife might be like. For example, you
might arrive at the hereafter and discover that the good are going to
Hell and the bad to Heaven, because, sometime way way way back when, God
lost control and the afterlife was given over to committees.
Or, let's say, God is a woman whose heaven treats everyone as equals. So why is she weeping? Well, the communists are ticked off because they only achieved their perfect society with the help of a God they don't believe in and the meritocrats are ticked off having to live with pinkos and the liberals are grousing about having no downtrodden to help and the conservatives no penniless to disparage and it turns out that the only thing everyone, including God, can agree on is that this is Hell.
Or maybe you've reached the hereafter after a long and arduous life, only to make the happy discovery that you get to choose who you'll get to be in the next life. You decide what you want for next time is a simple life. So you choose to come back as a horse, never stopping to think that next time you reach the afterlife and get to choose again, your horse brain won't have the smarts to choose being a human.
When download or buy this Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, in the majority of stories Eagleman reinforces a complex idea that God is Oneness--a simple everything. God is presence in all things--we are God's organs such as eyes, fingers--our biology is a manifestation of the Creator. There is not only one God, but Gods, They are also trivial. Our bodies are tuned machines, the mind is software or a computer chip, and the source of our engineering are the programmers, the Gods. Eaglemen presents Gods as residing in the Pantheon of competing experts, who are losing the connection with the whole and their creatures. We are not any longer whole, but assemblage of parts. Our life is flooded with the "gargantuan angst," the projection of us as separated in lower-dimensions, the three-dimensional egoistic beings, the parts that never achieve the full potential and allow the whole to be refracted in one's singularity.
God is also more "She," than "He," and even both. The inexhaustible creation process of the female nature that everybody is within from the birth to the exit door, where she resides in Heaven ("Egalitaire") "For months She moped around Her living room in Heaven, head drooped like a bulrush, while the lines piled up. Her advisers advised Her to delegate the decision making, but She loved Her humans too much to leave them to the care of anyone else." God is the creation of all things, including the "yeast" of imagination, like Victor Frankenstein created by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly, or bacteria, cancers, sickness, viruses that improve upon themselves and affect people's lives.
Or, let's say, God is a woman whose heaven treats everyone as equals. So why is she weeping? Well, the communists are ticked off because they only achieved their perfect society with the help of a God they don't believe in and the meritocrats are ticked off having to live with pinkos and the liberals are grousing about having no downtrodden to help and the conservatives no penniless to disparage and it turns out that the only thing everyone, including God, can agree on is that this is Hell.
Or maybe you've reached the hereafter after a long and arduous life, only to make the happy discovery that you get to choose who you'll get to be in the next life. You decide what you want for next time is a simple life. So you choose to come back as a horse, never stopping to think that next time you reach the afterlife and get to choose again, your horse brain won't have the smarts to choose being a human.
When download or buy this Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, in the majority of stories Eagleman reinforces a complex idea that God is Oneness--a simple everything. God is presence in all things--we are God's organs such as eyes, fingers--our biology is a manifestation of the Creator. There is not only one God, but Gods, They are also trivial. Our bodies are tuned machines, the mind is software or a computer chip, and the source of our engineering are the programmers, the Gods. Eaglemen presents Gods as residing in the Pantheon of competing experts, who are losing the connection with the whole and their creatures. We are not any longer whole, but assemblage of parts. Our life is flooded with the "gargantuan angst," the projection of us as separated in lower-dimensions, the three-dimensional egoistic beings, the parts that never achieve the full potential and allow the whole to be refracted in one's singularity.
God is also more "She," than "He," and even both. The inexhaustible creation process of the female nature that everybody is within from the birth to the exit door, where she resides in Heaven ("Egalitaire") "For months She moped around Her living room in Heaven, head drooped like a bulrush, while the lines piled up. Her advisers advised Her to delegate the decision making, but She loved Her humans too much to leave them to the care of anyone else." God is the creation of all things, including the "yeast" of imagination, like Victor Frankenstein created by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly, or bacteria, cancers, sickness, viruses that improve upon themselves and affect people's lives.
